I’m a pregnant roller derby athlete
Part one: Holy shit this is happening
Warning : I want to start out by saying this is me being honest. This is what I went through. It might not be popular or what other people went through, but this is what happened and how it made me feel and how I handled it. I’m here to share my experience so others don’t feel judged by expectation, so please don’t jump down my throat for my choices. Oh and ps, I also use tons of run-on sentences and speak in a stream of consciousness but here goes nothing.
Pregnancy has a million expectations on women and that’s part of what makes it difficult …because its not just the craziness of hormones and body changes, but also the set of parameters of how you should feel because that OH THIS IS ALL WORTH IT CAUSE- BABY. That makes me furious. It ignores my struggles and frustrations like I should be some happy robot housewife from the 50s. So without further ado, here’s my story of learning about my pregnancy.
I took the test shortly after coming back from our offseason. Balls and I always wanted kids, but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. Like, immediately quickly. Last weekend I was eating bloody steaks and drinking amazing wine and scrimmaging (not all at once, but you know). Went to the GP the next day- according to them no more of most of my favorite foods, and no more roller derby. It hit me like a train. I didn’t feel a shred of excitement. My identity was skating, it was playing the sport, coaching, and training with my best friends. I was now out of contention to skate at the world cup. (while its not impossible to return, the pressure of competing with that caliber of athletes post-nataly is unrealistic with my timeline and time off playing. I’ll do my best to come back but that pressure is unrealistic when also having a newborn). I felt loss, not only of control of my body but fear about what would happen to my strength, my skills. I work SO hard on skating, on my body, it’s a huge investment. It felt like that would all just unravel based on recommendations for pregnancy activity. I also felt guilt, like I was letting my team down being out so soon in the season. My due date is champs, that also means our coach (Balls) is out. While a baby was something we were looking forward to in our lives, the results of that test made me full of confusion. I felt an array of sadness, guilt, loss, expectation. I felt guilt for feeling sad about my pregnancy. HOW USEFUL IS THAT?
In the first day I got my act together and was like ok, this is happening, no turning back now. I told kitty first cause I knew she’d understand. It was hard for her too when she got pregnant. To me having a kid is exciting, but it’s not my main purpose in life, it’s not what I spent much my days thinking about. I wouldn’t say I was even broody. But I’ve heard these same feelings can creep up even when you have been obsessing, trying, and broody. It has never been the most important goal in my life. Maybe I’ll feel differently after the kid is here, but for now, that’s where I’m at. I have loads of aspirations that are just as important to me as parenting will be. I still feel that way. Kitty came over with some flowers and we cried a bit and worked on processing the info. It was nice to not feel alone, and she validated my feelings. She didn’t try to tell me it was all worth it, and that I should just deal with all the negative. We just.. talked about how crazy it all is.
I read this article recently by the nytimes that sums it up nicely in this quote.
“Becoming a mother is an identity shift, and one of the most significant physical and psychological changes a woman will ever experience… Most of the time, the experience of motherhood is not good or bad, it’s both good and bad. It’s important to learn how to tolerate, and even get comfortable with the discomfort of ambivalence.” Here is the link to that article, I highly recommend it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/well/family/the-birth-of-a-mother.html
While all this was going on Balls got a message from Lexi to leadership that SHE WAS PREGNANT! With my permission he told her about my news and we talked. It was the first joy I felt about it. I was happy for Lexi, and Lexi seemed genuinely excited.... and also I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t disappointing everyone, and if I was, I wasn’t the only one to blame. We gushed about it and decided to tell the team straight away. I still felt pretty disconnected from the idea of this thing inside me, but these were the first glimmers of positive emotions I had. That made it easier to imagine, but it didn’t by any means overshadow everything else I was experiencing.
I decided to take some control after feel so much loss of control in my body and identity. In the next day I researched a million articles on playing in the first trimester of contact sports. Kitty anonymously “asked for a friend” on some of the derby moms groups about the situation and continuing to train. While I waited their response, I found that most of the articles pointed to studies based on car accidents, not actual sports. The info is sparse and generally says - relax, take this time to take it easy. Go for a walk or take a pregnant lady class. GROANNN. (Mind you while this was happening Serena Williams was busy winning the Australian open while pregnant. MY TOTAL HERO) I found that rugby guidelines were against contact, and hockey was ok with it into trimester 1, both were just club policy.
While waiting for the info from Kitty, there was one training session where I coached or just tried to avoid contact, I decided that felt so ridiculous. I didn’t have any morning sickness and was feeling really good - normal even, all things considered and was super keen to keep playing into my first trimester. In the next few days I got a response from an Angel skater that played playoffs 8 weeks pregnant, and continued on till her first trimester. I also heard from a close friend/old teammate from Madison that played through the first trimester for both of her pregnancies. Her midwife had advised her that it’s so small, and so well protected in your pelvis, that really only serious injury would be the thing that made it miscarry. (not normal bumps from skating). She skated (jammed even!) till 12 weeks with one and 9 weeks with the other, the second one she stopped due to fatigue. Seeing as how I had never had or seen anyone with a major uterine injury from playing, I made the choice to play.
I made the choice to keep playing, but at this point I was outed with many of my teammates. Balls was really supportive and let it be up to me. He has been really great about that in general, and it helps to have my partner not place any limitations on me. The response from the team was really great. I was really afraid people wouldn’t play with me since I had told them. I gave the option to not pair up with me and checked with people to make sure it was ok, in the end no one refused me. Gaz said something like “women have been doing stuff for thousands of years so if you’re ok with it, go for it” and other people said things along the lines of “your body, your choice”. I continued to play for another 2.5 weeks until I started to just feel so tired and bloated the idea of smashing into people sounded terrible. But those 2+ weeks, it meant so much. I had closure, I had control, I had the choice, and most of all I had SO much fun playing party roller derby with Brawling. I felt ready to partake in this next adventure, take on a new role in the team and in my life. Getting to chose my own risk assessment also was a really big deal for the loss in confidence as being labeled the pregnant lady. It just seems that all of a sudden you’re looked, and supposed to look at yourself, like this fragile flower “in my condition”. That makes me crazy and I’m focused on doing everything I can, pushing myself and smashing this pregnancy at my own personal Birth Champs in Nov.
Im still skating at training, just no contact anymore. The next step in my journey was the whole” fake injury for the rest of the league until my scan”, but I’ll explain more of that experience in my next blog post. Part 2: The “secret” struggle. (Oh and ps - these were my feeling in week 5-7. Things are way different now at week 16.. I have lots of blog posts to catch up on cause those early days prescan were full of hard times. Things are really really good now, but i think it's important to record the journey as it was.)
